Dear D.,

We finally left the party for the partner in your practice, the party I never wanted to attend in the first place. We came home early, wilted from the late August heat, and flopped together on the battered sofa.

We sat silently as you rubbed my back. I felt the full width of your palms. I lost track of time. I stayed in my dress, my hair loose and, by that point, in tangles. I turned toward you, leaned into your chest, and then stretched across your lap. Your hands moved into my hair.

“We have to wash the car.”‘

“You mean we have to wash your car,” I said.

“Well, yes.”

“It’s okay. I’ll do it. I said I would.”

I felt your fingers take one chunk of my hair, twirl it into a coil, then shake it loose, pulling it straight again. I didn’t move away, but I thought about it.

“I really don’t get to see or touch your hair,” you said. “This is rare.”

“It is rare.”

“How come I’m allowed to do it today?”

“Because I’m too hot and sleepy to stop you.” I paused. “And it’s not like you’re not allowed to touch it other times.”

“Yeah, but you never let it happen other times. There’s no chance. Like it’s untouchable.”

“Are we washing your car or not?”

“Yeah.”

“I should get changed then.”

“Can you leave your hair down?”

I eased off your lap, gently, and didn’t know if I could leave my hair loose for you.

I changed in the bedroom, leaving my dress in a wrinkled heap on the floor. Instead of braiding my hair or pulling it upward, I tied it in a loose ponytail – a compromise.

Access to hair. You didn’t mean to ask for the impossible.

I’m no Samson. I know that for a fact. I already lost my hair and gained strength instead when it happened, but not without feeling crushed and disoriented. You didn’t know what was lost to me back then. You couldn’t know, not after playing with over two feet of hair locked securely in my scalp.

You didn’t know what was in my closet. On the floor toward the back, a spherical, silver pot lined with plastic sat in dust bunnies. It contained the hair that fell out of my head in 1998.

When lupus and other shades of illness first hit, I didn’t know what would be destroyed. When I went to my first rheumatology appointment, I was diagnosed. The doctor handed me a pamphlet on kidney failure and transplants, ordered an echocardiogram for the lining of my heart, and categorized the loss of mobility and pain in each joint.

I recalled images of tornados passing through towns, shredding one house and leaving the one next door intact. No one knew what would be saved or destroyed. I watched the illness and drugs pass through my body, wondering what would be left whole afterwards.

At first, I ignored the hair congregating on my brush, my bathroom floor, and my pillows and blankets. I ignored that a good tug would land so many strands in my hand.

Then I talked to my doctor about my new habit of ignoring my hair, specifically the hair that was not in my head anymore.

“Hair loss is one of the symptoms of lupus. It could also be your body adjusting to the drugs. And the stress of dealing with all the changes. Let’s keep track of it and your other symptoms. Could be just another symptom. Everyone’s lupus is different; people get different combinations of symptoms.”

It was not another symptom.

It was my hair.

Thin spots the size of dimes emerged, but by then, I was already defiant. I did not accept loss.

There were things I didn’t expect you to understand. There were things I wanted you to know. I didn’t want to be afraid anymore of whether you knew or not. Here’s what I did.

I became the hair cop. I went to the scenes of the crime and inspected the victims. When I saw strands abandoned on my pillow in the morning, I gathered them. When my brush grew clogged with hair, I pulled out the thick web between the bristles. When I saw what covered the bathroom floor after a shower, I leaned over and scooped up that hair, too.

It was my hair. It needed to remain my hair, even if it no longer stayed on my head. What fell out was not trash. It was me. I wasn’t going to have my hair taken away.

I found a way to keep it, which eventually raised logistical issues. At first, I kept the beginnings of loss in a shallow plastic container with a resealable lid.

In time, the container wasn’t big enough. I had more of my lost hair to keep in a container, or rather, more of the self that no longer remained part of me. The hair was still mine, all the length of it, all the inches that I refused to cut even as it fell out.

When I picked it up from any surface, I started to coil and knot it, as if my hands instinctively knew that long hair should be pulled up into a twist or a braid, no matter where the long hair was found. I deposited knotted balls of hair like yarn into the large silver pot once I realized the smaller container couldn’t handle the ongoing debris from the tornado.

Those were days of strange rituals.

Later, I showed you different hair rituals, like obsessively braiding my hair or pulling it up and out of reach, any style that was tight enough to bind my hair to me so that no one could take it away again.

My body was more stable by the time you loved me, but my mind was not. My mind stayed in starvation mode.

“Can you leave your hair down?”

I did leave it down. It’s down. It’s on the floor. It’s in a pot. It’s still mine. I own it.

I didn’t say that. Instead I went outside to the driveway where you had your car wet and soaped.

“A ponytail! Look at you.”

“It’s kind of loose. Be happy.”

The sun hit the trunk, while your home kept the car’s front in shade. You handed me a bucket of soapy water and a sponge and then returned to your spot in the sun, scrubbing the rear bumper.

Only outside for a few seconds, I began sweating in the heat immediately. I got to work, my ponytail flopping around my neck and sticking. I wiped sweat from my forehead into my hair.

Once the car was scrubbed, you took my bucket and yours to dump the dirty water. Your clothes grew transparent with sweat. I stood, waiting, fingering the wet tendrils of hair that grew knotted on their own. When you returned, you plunked both buckets of fresh water near the car. Your body folded onto the grass a couple of feet away, your face red and strained. You sat, throwing your head forward on bent knees.

I thought about rushing toward you. I didn’t move. After a deep breath, you leaned back, your hands supporting your weight, staying upright.

“I think the heat is getting the better of me,” you said.

“You’re the one who got stuck in the sun, not me. Will you be okay?”

“Yeah, I just gotta stay still for a bit.”

“That won’t get you cool, though.”

“Eh.”

You pulled your soaked shirt off and threw it in the grass after wiping your face with it.

I reached for the band holding my ponytail, flicking the sweat out of my hair as I pulled, letting the band fall on the ground. For once, I didn’t check the band for clumps of hair that hadn’t fallen out in a long time.

I swung my hair loose, walked to the buckets of fresh water, and leaned over one. The cool water on my scalp was an unexpected shock and relief. I reached through my hair to submerge it completely.

As soon as I began to straighten, I could feel the weight of my hair, heavy with its re-grown mass and water. I walked toward you, slightly crooked, supporting my hair with one hand. You started to move once I came next to you, droplets already falling on you.

“No, don’t move. Just stay there.”

I didn’t see your expression. I never took time to look. The water dripped quickly, and I didn’t want to waste it.

I walked behind you, turned to stand with my back to yours, and lowered myself. My back slid against yours until my backside hit the ground.

“Here.”

I flipped my hair back and over your face, shoulders, and chest, wherever it could reach you. A whipping, slapping sound as my hair landed, and then you sighing, moving into a groan. Minutes passed.

After I pulled my hair from you and walked around to face you, I scoured your skin from your scalp to your belt. No dearly departed strands. Confusion and amusement spread across your face.

“What are you looking for?”

I ran my hands over your neck, chest, and arms for one last check. None of my hair lost.

“You.”

Jennifer Clare Burke still feels odd writing in the third person for this bio paragraph. The owner and founder of Merge Press shut Merge down for good, but Jen’s book, A Life Less Convenient: Letters To My Ex, has found a home with Homofactus Press and will be released in ‘08. The book chronicles the physical and emotional terrain of sex, relationships, and chronic illness. She also contributes to TheNervousBreakdown.com, with three recent articles in October, 2007.